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Greymouth Evening Star, 1 December 1926, Page 8

A correspondent forwards the following literary-gem in the hope that those good housewives who are still midst the drudgery of spring cleaning may have their burden lightened somewhat in the realisation that after all she is following out the .excellent example set by Dame Nature: "I love to see Nature do her spring housecleaning, wjth the rain-clouds for her water-buckets and the winds tor her brooms. What an amount of drenching and sweeping she can do in a day! How ■ she dashes pailful and pailful into' every corner, till the whole earth is as clean as a new floor! Another day, she attacks the piles of dead leaves, where they have lain since last October, and scatters them in a trice, so that every cranny may be sunned and aired, or, grasping her long brooms by the handles, she will go into the woods and beat the icicles, off the big trees as a housewife would , brush . down cobwebs, so that, the released limbs straighten up like a man who has gotten out of debt, and almost say to you, joyfully, “Now then, we are all right again!” This done, she begins to hang up soft new curtains at the forest windows, and to spread , over her floor a new carpet of an emerald loveliness such as no mortal looms could ever have woven. And then, at last, she sends out invitations through the South, and even to some ; tropical lands, for the .birds to come . and spend the summer. The invita- , tions are sent out in March, and ac- ’ cepted in April and May, and by June her house is full of visitors.” (From “A Kentucky Cardinal,” by 1 James Lane Allen, 1894). • ‘